The Knight

This time I was not so lucky, and came back to the surface empty-handed. Pulling myself up, weary and freezing, I decided to make a thorough examination of the grotto before diving again. It would give me time to catch my breath and to warm myself somewhat.

The dark passage behind the altar descended steeply for the twenty or thirty steps I followed it, and was soon darker than the wildest night. A dozen other murky openings in the walls of the grotto led into small caves, all of them more or less damp. Grengarm, I decided, probably had a den in the roots of the mountain, down the long passage. Grengarm would not be able to see me, and that was surely good. I, on the other hand, would not be able to see Grengarm either.

Shuddering at the recollection of Setr, I dove again, swimming down until I thought my lungs would burst and at last catching hold of something that seemed likely to be a stick of sodden driftwood.

At the surface, it turned out to be my other boot. I felt like a kid at Christmas. I was so cold and weak that I was afraid for a minute that I would not be able to pull myself out of the well, but I danced on the damp stone floor of the grotto and even tried a few cartwheels before wringing out this stocking and laying it beside the first one.

Those stockings were in the entrance to the passage behind the altar, as I said; looking down it, I found it was not quite so dark as I had imagined. Thinking things over, I decided that I had remembered the utter blackness fifteen or twenty yards farther, and had transferred it to the entrance.

Your mind plays strange tricks on you—that is what I told myself. I could read Aelf writing, though I had just about forgotten I could write it. Now that I knew I could, I could see that it must have been one of the things I learned in Aelfrice before I came out in Parka’s cave. The Aelf had wiped a lot of things out of my memory—who knows why? All my memories of that time had been erased. But they had not wiped out what I was supposed to say to somebody about their troubles and the injustices they had suffered. I could not remember any of the details, but they had to be there just like the shapes of the Aelf letters. “They sent you with the tale of their wrongs and their worship,” Parka had told me. When they had left their message, they must have left what I had learned about their writing, too. Maybe they had to.

By the time I had thought all that, I was back at the well. I knew I would have to reach bottom this time if I wanted my mail back. I would have to give it everything I had—every last ounce. A good dive to start with, jumping as high as I could and breaking the water like an arrow to get as deep as possible.

I made a good dive and swam down until my ears ached, but there was nothing but water ahead when I had to come up.

After sight-seeing around the grotto a while to warm up and catch my breath, I picked out a nice smooth stone almost too heavy to carry and jumped into the well holding it. Down and down it carried me until the light vanished. Here there was (it seemed to me) a new quality to the water—it was still cold, and still very different from even the coldest, wettest air. But it was not suffocating anymore. It was water that had stopped trying to drown me.

I was so surprised, and so scared, that I let go of the stone, drifting up at first, then swimming upward with all my might when the tiny circle of blue light that was the top of the well showed again.

This time I shot out of the water, chilly and tired but not exactly breathless. That was Aelfrice down there, I told myself. The water in Aelfrice knows who I am.

The pool I had dived into on the Isle of Glas had its bottom in Aelfrice, I remembered. So had the sea, or that was how it seemed when the Kelpies had dived into it with me. So had the pool into which the winged man had sunk, for that matter. There was no reason this well should not take me to Aelfrice too, although I suspected it would not take everyone there.

“But I’m not everyone, after all.” This time I chose two smaller stones, nicely rounded.

Something moved in the chill, blind depths. I could not feel it, but I felt the little currents it made. And then, with the outstretched hands that held my ballast stones, I felt something new. Rough and hard. Flexible. Letting go of one stone, I grabbed it, then dropped the other.

My return to the surface hurt like the devil. Again and again I just about let go of the slimy, shapeless thing that held me back. From its weight and feel, I was sure it was the hauberk of double mail I had taken from Nytir, although there seemed to be something else caught in it—something long, awkward, stiff and bumpy.